Scoping Out Suspects & Prospects
Before you can become a leading designer, photographer or writer with great clients and a wall full of awards, you’re going to need to scope out some suspects and prospects. A prospect, simply put, is a potential or “prospective” client. They’re in your sales loop and qualified, but haven’t yet graduated to being a paying client with loads of work for you.
Just before them in the sales and marketing food chain are “suspects.” These are the folks you think may need what you’re selling, but you haven’t confirmed that through the qualifying process. Qualifying, simply put, is the process of determining whether or not a suspect needs and buys what you have to offer and can pay for it. The process can involve much more detail, but the previous is it in a nutshell.
While I’m writing definitions, this is a good place to define marketing and sales. If you look in the newspaper want ads, odds are, you’ll see several jobs for marketing reps. In most cases, they’re not looking for a marketing rep. They’re looking for a salesperson. Marketing and sales aren’t synonyms. Marketing tasks are those activities do to warm up the sales playing field. It’s sending out a mailer or press release, writing some articles or white papers, attending networking events, along with other tools and tactics to get your name out there and become visible. Sales, on the other hand, is about face time, making calls, drafting proposals, giving presentations and ultimately closing the deal.
Speaking of making calls, contrary to popular belief, most design firm principals do make cold and warm calls. As a matter of fact, design firm consultants, Design Management Resources, did a research study a while back. They found that as much as 30% of a designer’s or firm’s business comes from cold calls and sending cold letters with a phone follow up. That’s pretty significant. If you’re not sending letters and making calls to prospects, you might just want to rethink your efforts.
Okay, I wrote all that to write this. Where the heck do you find suspects and prospects? Search engines and the Web are good places to start. Poke around and look for some growth industries or businesses that are similar to work you’ve already done. Swing over to the library and hit the reference desk. Ask them to point you to the Index Guide of Advertisers and/or the Index Guide of Advertising Agencies, if you do trade work. These hefty tomes are also called the “Red Books” and they provide a wealth of information. Others are The Million Dollar Directory and O’Dwyers Directory of P.R. Firms. There are several other directories the Reference Librarian can suggest. Over the course of an afternoon you can build a pretty decent list.
The Web also offers some helpful sites. LinkedIn.com and Biznik.com are two popular business networking sites. You put together a profile and then build your network. The idea is something like six degrees of separation. Folks you know know others who know yet more. That's a whole lot of knowing going on. In a couple of steps you can gain introductions to several suspects and prospects. Another is Jigsaw.com. It’s an online directory of business cards and pretty slick. The other day I was trying to find contact info for a prospect. They have several locations, but I couldn’t anything about their corporate office and contact info. I popped the business name into Jigsaw and bingo! It returned several key contacts at the corporate office, complete with addresses, phone numbers and even phone extensions. How handy is that? For a pretty small investment, Jigsaw can bring you some big returns. Yet another is Spoke. It’s similar to Jigsaw and they might be just the ticket for you.
Finding and contacting suspects and prospects should be part of your regular week, if not your day. Schedule in the time to do it as though it were any other project-oriented task. Because if you don’t, there aren’t going to be many projects.
Ideally, you’ll want to build a list of about 300 or more people. Sure, it takes time and effort to build that amount of contacts. Obviously, the more contacts you have, the better your odds are of landing a juicy gig. Keep in contact to ensure you’re on their radar screen. Drop them a handwritten note, a link to a pertinent article, a phone call and promo piece here and there. When the time is right, you’ll be the one at the top of their mind.
Just before them in the sales and marketing food chain are “suspects.” These are the folks you think may need what you’re selling, but you haven’t confirmed that through the qualifying process. Qualifying, simply put, is the process of determining whether or not a suspect needs and buys what you have to offer and can pay for it. The process can involve much more detail, but the previous is it in a nutshell.
While I’m writing definitions, this is a good place to define marketing and sales. If you look in the newspaper want ads, odds are, you’ll see several jobs for marketing reps. In most cases, they’re not looking for a marketing rep. They’re looking for a salesperson. Marketing and sales aren’t synonyms. Marketing tasks are those activities do to warm up the sales playing field. It’s sending out a mailer or press release, writing some articles or white papers, attending networking events, along with other tools and tactics to get your name out there and become visible. Sales, on the other hand, is about face time, making calls, drafting proposals, giving presentations and ultimately closing the deal.
Speaking of making calls, contrary to popular belief, most design firm principals do make cold and warm calls. As a matter of fact, design firm consultants, Design Management Resources, did a research study a while back. They found that as much as 30% of a designer’s or firm’s business comes from cold calls and sending cold letters with a phone follow up. That’s pretty significant. If you’re not sending letters and making calls to prospects, you might just want to rethink your efforts.
Okay, I wrote all that to write this. Where the heck do you find suspects and prospects? Search engines and the Web are good places to start. Poke around and look for some growth industries or businesses that are similar to work you’ve already done. Swing over to the library and hit the reference desk. Ask them to point you to the Index Guide of Advertisers and/or the Index Guide of Advertising Agencies, if you do trade work. These hefty tomes are also called the “Red Books” and they provide a wealth of information. Others are The Million Dollar Directory and O’Dwyers Directory of P.R. Firms. There are several other directories the Reference Librarian can suggest. Over the course of an afternoon you can build a pretty decent list.
The Web also offers some helpful sites. LinkedIn.com and Biznik.com are two popular business networking sites. You put together a profile and then build your network. The idea is something like six degrees of separation. Folks you know know others who know yet more. That's a whole lot of knowing going on. In a couple of steps you can gain introductions to several suspects and prospects. Another is Jigsaw.com. It’s an online directory of business cards and pretty slick. The other day I was trying to find contact info for a prospect. They have several locations, but I couldn’t anything about their corporate office and contact info. I popped the business name into Jigsaw and bingo! It returned several key contacts at the corporate office, complete with addresses, phone numbers and even phone extensions. How handy is that? For a pretty small investment, Jigsaw can bring you some big returns. Yet another is Spoke. It’s similar to Jigsaw and they might be just the ticket for you.
Finding and contacting suspects and prospects should be part of your regular week, if not your day. Schedule in the time to do it as though it were any other project-oriented task. Because if you don’t, there aren’t going to be many projects.
Ideally, you’ll want to build a list of about 300 or more people. Sure, it takes time and effort to build that amount of contacts. Obviously, the more contacts you have, the better your odds are of landing a juicy gig. Keep in contact to ensure you’re on their radar screen. Drop them a handwritten note, a link to a pertinent article, a phone call and promo piece here and there. When the time is right, you’ll be the one at the top of their mind.
Labels: marketing, neil tortorella, prospects, sales, suspects
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